Annual sports memorobilia show held at Bristol-Plymouth in Taunton

Saturday

Jan 25, 2014 at 8:06 PMJan 25, 2014 at 8:29 PM

Charles Winokoor Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter @cwinokoor

TAUNTON — Hockey fans who showed up this weekend at Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School to see Bruins legend Terry O'Reilly and the team's national anthem singer Rene Rancourt weren't disappointed.

But the organizer of the sports card and memorabilia charity show was.

Overall turnout "was very lean," said Jeffrey Nystrom, a computer-skills/networking teacher and faculty advisor to the B-P chapter of SkillsUSA.

Saturday marked the second year Taunton's technical-skills high school has sponsored a sports memorabilia-oriented charity drive.

Last year, Nystrom said, the event raised $5,000 when Bruins forward Shawn Thornton made an appearance. Those proceeds helped pay for 20 students and six faculty advisors to travel to New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, where they volunteered to rebuild houses damaged by the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.

This year, he said, the lion's share of the money will be donated to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism and Be Like Brit, a nonprofit created in honor of 19-year-old Britney Gengel, who, with three classmates and two university professors, was killed by an earthquake while volunteering in Haiti in 2010.

A smaller portion of proceeds, Nystrom said, will be used to defray the cost of students who will attend competitive events both on a regional and national level.

Among those who did make the trip Saturday to collect an autograph was David Santos of New Bedford.

Santos, 62, said O'Reilly — who as a right wing with the Bruins in the 1970s and '80s was nicknamed Bloody O'Reilly for his skill as an enforcer — and the late baseball great Ted Williams rank among his all-time favorite sports icons.

"He was the spark plug of the Boston Bruins," Santos said of O'Reilly, as his hockey hero signed autographs at a table in a lecture room.

"He took his lumps, but didn't take cheap shots when he was on the ice. He was the team protector," a clearly enthused Santos said.

Deb Santos, his wife, said her husband "had tears in his eyes, he was so excited" as they drove in from New Bedford.

"He was like a little kid," she said with a smile.

Money was raised by charging sports memorabilia collectors $30 for table space on which they displayed and sold their wares. Attendees, meanwhile, paid $20 to get an O'Reilly autograph and $15 for Rancourt, who did in fact sing the national anthem, to sign his name.

A number of collectables, including a Bruins puck and an autographed photo of New England Patriots running back Stevan Ridley, were auctioned off to help raise money.

Nystrom speculated the turnout might have been stronger if not for two for-profit sports memorabilia shows, one in Attleboro and the other in Randolph, were held on the same day.

SkillsUSA is a Virginia-based non-profit that brings students and teachers together in advancement of ensuring a skilled workforce, by helping high school and college students prepare for careers in technical, trade and other fields of endeavor.

Nystrom said the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism was selected on the suggestion of a SkillsUSA board member whose son has autism. Be Like Brit, he said, was chosen, in part, at the urging of Jonathan Steiner, a technical school grad who is still associated with SkillsUSA and who was a cousin of the late Britney Gengel.

Nystrom said the school had to pay both O'Reiily and Rancourt to appear, but added that they reduced their normal fee due to the nature of the event.